May 03, 2012: My quick visit to Bangalore was heading to a
close. I was desperately looking for tickets to return home. Thursday night
plus summer holidays meant that almost every bus to Kerala was running full! I
tried every operators’ website, but every bus was either full, or had only the
last row seats empty. The story was same for Karnataka SRTC as well. I decided
to check out the travel agents in Madiwala area. I headed first to Friends
Travels – Kallada G4’s bus was full by then. Then went to Shama – they were
full as well. Then tried a handful of operators including Kallada (Suresh
Kallada), KPN, Viji, etc – all of them had tickets only to Thrissur bypass.
Getting off at Thrissur bus at 4 or 5 in the morning is a nightmare – public
transportation would wake up only after 5:30 or 6 in the morning. I decided to
return home empty handed, and may be try out my luck with some train (yeah... a
bit over-ambitious for sure).